


Convergence

by CountOfEight



Category: Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: Fighting, Inappropriate Use of the Force, Kylo Ren does something right, M/M, Panic Attacks, Questionable decision-making, This got long, post-TFA
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-05-27
Updated: 2016-05-31
Packaged: 2018-07-10 07:41:30
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 17,675
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6973900
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CountOfEight/pseuds/CountOfEight
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After the destruction of the Starkiller, Hux comes to Ren in a moment of vulnerability.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> See the end of the fic for some _STUNNING_ art by [injureddreams](http://injureddreams.tumblr.com/)!! She absolutely knocked it out of the park and I still can't believe how lucky I am!  
>     
> There was a very uneven ratio of Redbull to sleep involved in the creation of this fic. I feel that this exonerates me of all blame.

The viewport at the back of the _sprint_ -class medical craft _Deliverance_ was a small, dismal affair, more like an oversized painting when compared to the sprawling views offered onboard the Finalizer or the large windows that had encased the command center on the Starkiller.

General Hux pressed a palm to the transparisteel surface, attempting to center himself around the bite of cold that seeped in through his glove. His mind felt fractured, disorganized. _Pathetic_ , he reprimanded himself but his thoughts only seemed to sink further without his consent. His eyes traced unseeingly over the blurring lines of the stars as they streaked past. For the first time since he was old enough to remember he felt lost within himself as he struggled to make sense of everything that had happened.

They had lost. _He_ had lost.

Hux was not accustomed to losing. Everyone must, here and there, but all his losses up until now had been small, calculated things. Necessary blows to his pride that had to be weathered for the larger scheme of things. But this… This was monstrous.

A handful of children and their toys had brought the mightiest force in the galaxy to its knees, and his Starkiller, the summary of all their aspirations and toil, was gone. It didn’t seem possible... _shouldn’t_ have been possible. But it was.

It defied all comprehension.

He obsessively ran the numbers again and again and could only come up with impossibility. They should not have succeeded. They should have been obliterated, tiny fleet, ancient _Falcon_ and poster-child pilot all. They should have been nothing more than a brief footnote on the long list of the First Order’s glory and victory.

But instead…

Instead the Starkiller was dust and rubble and Hux was fleeing with an injured Ren and the meagre crew he had managed to scrape together during the panic towards the safety of the Supreme Leader’s flagship, the _Citadel_. In defeat.

How had this _happened?_

He wanted to pound his fists on the viewport, to howl his frustrations at the stars, but refrained. Such displays were of Ren’s making, not his own, but his fingers curled helplessly into a fist, tightening until he could feel the bite of his nails through the well-kept leather. He had no sensitivity for the power that Ren wielded, no talent for seeing the future, but certainty settled in his chest all the same.

He was going to die for this.

He was, in all likelihood, conveying himself to his own execution every bit as much as he was conveying Ren to Snoke.

The Starkiller had been his. His brainchild, his command. To lose it this way was a failure beyond anything he had ever conceived of. It didn’t matter that what had happened today had been beyond the scope of his control, nearly beyond understanding. It still fell on him. That was what it meant to command.

As he had run into that holochamber in the planet’s final moments, he’d searched the hazy blue light that formed Snoke’s twisted features for a sign, some vague clue as to what the creature intended for him now that the base was crumbling around his very ears, but there had been nothing. Only Snoke’s command that Kylo Ren be brought to him and the cryptic remark about completing the knight’s training. There had been not a word for himself, only for Ren.

To make matters worse, all further attempts at communication since clearing the destruction had been refused. Snoke must have known his fears, but would give him nothing. A test, conceivably, but perhaps the Supreme Leader had simply believed that he might run and hide like some kriffing coward if he knew the truth.  Hux drew himself up to full height, though there was no one in the cramped corridor to see. If that were the case then he had been greatly underestimated and he would at least see it recognized before the end.

He drew his hands behind his back with deliberate slowness, focusing on the way his muscles moved as he folded them tightly together. Running would never be an option. Not for this or anything else. To run would be to abandon his ideals and the First Order was so much more than just a path to walk. It was the correct path, the only path. It was the truth the galaxy required for salvation. There was not a capillary in his body that he would not bleed for the Order, not a bone he would not see broken if it would further the truth of their cause. He would die, too. For it and by it if that was what was required of him to serve.

The sick feeling settling in his stomach was of no consequence. Same as the voice that whispered that there was nothing he could have differently, that he had done everything that needed to be done and still, _still_ …

It would be a fitting summary of his existence, anyway. To have everything taken from him at what should have been his moment of triumph, of victory, and then to be wiped from history as a fluke, a bright example of failure and nothing more.

He turned abruptly on a booted heel as though he could stride away from his thoughts, leaving them to scatter amongst the stars as he made his way towards the ship’s medical bay where the single medic he had pulled from the chaos was attempting to stabilize one Kylo Ren.

~~~

The walk was a short one, barely the work of a few minutes was required to pass from one end of the ship to the other, but when he approached the medbay doors he saw that there was a trooper standing outside. AC5719, Hux recalled from a glimpse of the designation on the side of his helmet. He was one of the three regular troopers that Hux had managed to collect to man this ship, excluding the pilot and medic of course. Altogether they made six, not counting Ren. The Knight was hardly in any fit state to be considered of assistance to them.

_Of course,_ Hux thought bitterly, _that could be said regardless of his condition._ It was actually a stroke of luck that Snoke’s attack dog was out of commission. It truly wasn’t a large ship. There was very little in the way of machinery that they could afford to lose.

The soldier drew up to attention when he noticed Hux approaching, but didn’t move from his position blocking the doors. He appeared to have been waiting there for him.

“Sir,” he began, and Hux immediately nodded his permission for the man to continue. “Something you should be aware of, sir.”

Hux cast an automatic eye over the trooper’s posture. It was properly alert, infused with exactly the correct amount of respect for Hux’s vastly superior rank, but there was also the slightest edge of something in the way he was holding himself through the armor. Nervousness, maybe. Doubt perhaps, at worst. Hux’s own stance put his hands neatly behind his back, within easy reach of the small blaster he kept tucked away there in his belt. It would be a grievous loss to have to kill one of the few crew members he had available to him, but he simply did not have the time, resources, or patience to deal with the seeds of dissent. Not after everything.

“I’m listening, 5719,” he said smoothly, and watched for a moment as the trooper’s demeanor bloomed with what could only be pride before settling once more into the previous nervous respect.

“Sir. I was with the squad Lord Ren brought to the oscillator.”

The urge to lean forward was suddenly overpowering. Hux would have given anything to know what went on in that space, to be privy to the chain of events that had led to the destruction of his life’s work. He blinked once, keeping his weight balanced over the balls of his feet, his expression carefully neutral.

“Go on,” he prompted when the trooper seemed to be hesitating again, taking care not to give any indication of just how badly he needed this knowledge.

“Something strange happened down there. None of us knew what to think but––”

“To the point, if you would.” It came out mildly harsher than he’d intended. He wondered if Ren might not have done something incriminating down in the oscillator and entertained an idle hope that he was about to be gifted with some such secret. It would be comforting to have a card left to play, to know that the spoiled knight might not simply walk away from this disgrace either.

To his credit the trooper simply nodded at his reprimand without wasting any more time on apologies. “Han Solo, sir. He appeared, called out to Lord Ren, approached him, even. He didn’t seem afraid, which was strange enough, but then he said...well. He said that they were related. Called him his son.”

Hux didn’t bat an eye.

“And where is Solo now?”

The trooper seemed surprised. “Lord Ren killed him, of course.”

“Ah...of course.”

Now _that_ was interesting. Not Ren’s parentage, that much he had known already. Ben Solo, bastard child of a smuggler and the Resistance General herself. No, the part that was of interest to him was that Ren, eternal child and thorn in his side, had just murdered his own father.

Hux had no idea what effect this might have on the knight’s delicate temperament, but he counted it a small blessing that he could at least be prepared for it when Ren eventually awoke. There was little he could do for the ship in the way of actual fortification against the other man’s seemingly inevitable deterioration, but a little knowledge could go a long way, particularly where Ren was concerned.

Some of the pieces he had been missing were quickly fitting themselves together in his mind. He had seen the _Falcon_ fleeing the dying Starkiller even as he himself had dragged Ren aboard this very craft. If that wretched ship was still flying without its master, then it was almost certain that Solo’s hairy friend had sat behind the controls, likely with a grudge to match the smoking hole he’d found in Ren’s side.

His stomach twinged softly to recall the wound. He hadn’t seen it properly, had been unable to focus on anything in the moment beyond the dire need to get off of the collapsing base, but he hadn’t needed to see the hole punched through Ren to know how bad it was.

Whole sections of his uniform were still weighty with the telltale damp of Kylo Ren’s blood.

_Massive internal trauma,_ his mind had supplied unhelpfully as he was pulling the knight aboard, and the way the doctor’s eyes had widened when he pushed the layers of fabric aside had only confirmed it. Hux’s stomach slipped a little further back towards his spine. If Kylo Ren died—no, he couldn’t waste time on unproductive fear. He was returning to the Supreme Leader with one failure to his name, but it had not yet become two. He would deal with that potential disaster if and only if it passed into reality.

“Was there anything else?” he prompted, struggling with the sudden need to get inside those doors and confirm that the fool knight still lived. He would have been alerted, he reminded himself. The doctor would have contacted him immediately if something so catastrophic had occurred.

“No sir.” The tension was evaporating quickly from the trooper now that his message had been relayed. He had done his duty and now trusted that his General would handle the information in the appropriate manner. Hux’s hand relaxed away from the blaster. He was glad not to have had to shoot this one. He made a mental note to put in a distinction for the soldier if he himself survived the next two days.

The voice that whispered that the trooper would remain unrecognized was silenced. No recognition at all was better than anything he might do for the man now. A word of praise from a dead man rarely benefitted anyone.

“Dismissed,” he said carefully, and watched as the trooper snapped himself into a sharp salute before marching back towards the cockpit to aid his fellows. Hux resolved to have another word with him before they reached the _Citadel_. He wanted to know more of what had gone on in the oscillator, needing it so that he might at least hold some understanding of his failure as it killed him.

But those thoughts and that understanding were for later, and as the white armor disappeared from his sight he hurriedly punched the access code into the door’s control panel, listening to the chime as the data was confirmed and the durasteel slid back to allow him through to the medical bay.

~~~~

The doctor glanced up briefly from where he had been hunched over the controls of the bacta tank as the doors hissed shut again, but Hux noticed him with only half a mind, waving him back to his work as he crossed the cramped room, his eyes already fixed on the long form suspended in the blue-tinted liquid.

Ren looked bad, there was no getting around it. He almost might have been dead, the way he hung there limply like that. Hux’s gut threatened him with that irrational panic again, but the lights on the tank still blinked steadily, no alarms sounded. Kylo Ren was alive, at any rate, if only just. A small mercy.

Hux took quick stock of each of the knight’s injuries in turn. The slash to Ren’s face that continued to crawl down his neck and multiple smaller wounds that Hux hadn’t previously noticed on his shoulders and thigh were already pinkening, taking on the strange gloss that came with new skin and scarring. Those were mild. Not a cause for true concern.

The wound at his side was another matter entirely.

It was no longer open, no longer sluggishly spilling the gore that Hux could still feel drying against his own skin, but it still looked black and deadly against the remaining pale of Ren's unmarred flesh. Around it the skin was mottled so dark with bruising that it became difficult to tell with certainty where the injury actually began and ended, but there was little question of its size.

Hux’s lips pressed themselves into a hard, thin line.

_“No,”_ Ren had gasped, shrinking back through the snow as Hux approached him. _“You can’t be...stay away. Please just stay away…”_

The knight’s eyes had been open, but they weren’t seeing. Not really. They had been sick-looking. Clouded. It had only taken Hux a moment to realize that Ren’s pain-delirious mind was tormenting him as he bled out in the snow, layering visions of others over Hux’s own features, and he was now almost certain that he knew at least one of the faces that Ren had seen.

It was hardly an uncommon sentiment after all; wanting to run from the ghosts of the men you'd killed.

He had thought he would enjoy seeing Ren that way; weakened and afraid, begging for Hux to stay back but lacking the strength to even flee. To his dismay, he had had simply found it revolting. He had uncapped the sedative in his hand, jamming it into Ren’s thigh even as the knight’s limbs had pushed at the snow in a useless attempt at retreat. That part, at least, had been somewhat satisfying, though the fact that Ren had whimpered like a small child as he went under had somewhat lessened the pleasure.

When he’d lifted the body, he had immediately felt the dampness seep in against his tunic and had tried not to look at how much red they were leaving behind them in the snow.

The answer had been _too much_.

“He will recover,” the doctor volunteered, perhaps sensing his agitation which only irritated Hux further. If even a grunt could tell that he was out of sorts he was truly slipping. He smoothed the emotion from his face as he turned to the man, expecting a more complete report.

The doctor shrugged in a way that Hux found incredibly unprofessional. “It was pretty touch and go there for a while, but he’s stable now and healing at what is frankly an incredible rate. At this pace the worst of it will require at least eight more hours inside the tank, but after that I’ll be able to clear him for non-strenuous movement.”

He didn’t have to clarify what “the worst of it” was. That much was beyond self-evident.

Hux nodded absently. This was good news, though he found he could not be thrilled by it. The idea of Ren waltzing away from this scot-free cut at him more sharply than he had anticipated. Hux was no fool. He had always known that there was far more leniency for Ren in Snoke’s books than there was for himself. It only made sense. Talented, malleable prodigies were a difficult thing to come by in the universe, but to replace a general one needed only to promote another qualified officer.

He understood it. Had always understood it.

But it burned.

The doctor cast a quick glance between Hux and the tank, clearly wanting to say something more and Hux raised an eyebrow at him.

“He has an incredible amount of injuries on his person,” the man explained. “Most of them are old, but some were very clearly traumatic and I’d questi—”

Hux fixed him with a sharp look. “I hardly think that is your concern, doctor," he said, ignoring the fact that he had noticed the same. "Your focus should remain on the task at hand.”

Hux would have sworn he saw the corner of the man’s mouth twist wryly, but it was gone in an instant as he stepped away from the control panel, palms open in apology. “I’m afraid all we can do now is wait. His life isn’t under threat at this point, the tank simply needs time to work on that wound. Though I will say it was a miracle he was even conscious when you found him. Early stages of frostbite, exhaustion, and _that_. The entry trauma alone from a projectile of that magnitude would kill most men, entirely setting aside the internal damage. And you said he fought…”

“Enough,” Hux snapped irritably, glaring to ensure that the rambling man fell silent. He studied the doctor, looking him over and wondering how such a man had ever made it through the system. His casual manner was exactly the sort of thing that training was designed to beat out of his personnel and it was also something that Hux was feeling very under-equipped to deal with at present.

He gestured to the adjoining room, where he knew there was a bed and a small refresher unit.

“You’re tired,” he observed, taking in the slightly darkened skin beneath the man’s eyes. The doctor had already been on duty when things on Starkiller had gone to hell and Hux was aware that it had probably been a great while since the man had had any sleep. The same went for himself, of course, but he was more than capable of managing. This was hardly the longest he had gone without in his career. “Go rest.”

It was an order, but the man cocked a brow at him. “You’re not in any better shape than I am.”

Hux felt his jaw go tight around a snarl but he smothered it. He had to be rational about this. If he couldn’t do that then what was he good for now? The doctor was only doing his job, but it was infuriating him. Why? Perhaps it was the man’s apparent success in plucking Ren from the jaws of death that was provoking him this way, but Hux had a sinking feeling that the actual answer was something he’d rather not acknowledge. That something dark and disgraceful within the pit of himself was making him slip this way.

“Just go,” he said tiredly. “You’ll be needed when he wakes. It hardly takes specialized training to sit and wait.” He gestured at the small stool arranged next to the tank, obviously intended for whomever was observing the patient. “I can manage that much.”

He didn’t say that he required the man’s skills to be at peak efficiency when Ren did awaken. That much, at least, was obvious. Of the two of them, the doctor – Hux realized that he didn’t know his name – had the more relevant skill set and so it was simply a matter of protocol that his rest took priority. Also unsaid was the fact that, of the two of them, it would be Hux who took the blame if Ren received any form of mishandling in his custody.

_Not,_ a traitorous corner of his mind whispered, _that the end result would come to any difference,_ but he pushed the thought aside again when it made his heart lurch sickeningly in his chest.

There it was. That was the sickness within him.

Fear.

He couldn’t allow for it. Not with so little time left to him, so he crushed the feeling down, bearing down hard until it was so small that he could hardly feel it. It was something he used to do when he was young and too ashamed to admit that that blackness of his walls at night looked like an emptiness that someone small and alone might never find their way out of, and he was pleased to find that he still remembered how it was done.

Duty. Decorum. He wasn’t going to turn into a child because of this. He wouldn’t become a coward.

The medic seemed to want to argue, but Hux snapped that he had just given the man an order and then turned away before he could watch any trace of pity creep into the other man’s gaze. Doctors were always far too intelligent for their own good and Hux hardly felt that he was operating at his most subtle right now. Yet another personal failure.

There was a quiet, “Very well,” and then a hiss as the small door slid open behind him. “The computer will alert me to any changes in his condition but the red triangular button will page me directly. Use it if you need to. Take care of yourself, General.”

Hux did not respond, and it was long minutes after the door had hissed itself shut before he found the strength to turn himself around again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've got a tumblr now? If that's your thing check it out here: <http://countofeight.tumblr.com/>


	2. Chapter 2

The quiet was getting to him.

Hux had stood up and then sat back down again no less than four times since that doctor had left and had finally ended up standing in front of Ren’s tank, feeling too useless while sitting but also too aware while standing that there was nothing here for him to do.

The silence crowded him in, making the dilemma sit even more uncomfortably in his awareness and filling him with a jumpy sort of urgency that he had absolutely nowhere to channel. It seemed thick, almost alive, dragging at his attention when usually it was the thing he craved most at the end of a long day. 

Ren’s presence in the tank was true to form in helping nothing. Occasionally a few bubbles would float up from under the breathing mask, but even that was mostly silent. It was almost funny, in a way, because Hux had always believed that he would love to see Ren so quiet, to be able to stand in his presence without being subjected to the man’s constant whining and posturing. There was always something. Hux had never understood how a single person could have so many useless things to say, but Ren had never ceased to surprise him.  And so of course it was only now, after the knight was finally, blessedly silent that Hux might actually have welcomed the man’s voice.

Anything to weave over this oppressive silence.

He studied the Ren’s face around the tank’s simple breathing mechanism, trying to forget the way the room’s air seemed to be pressing at him by allowing himself to feel intrigued by the knight’s appearance.

There had been little opportunity to look in the past, and that made this moment something of a novelty for Hux. He could count on less than a full hand the amount of times he had seen Ren without his mask and each time the man had been incensed, his rage twisting and darkening his features into something that had seemed to belong behind that garish metal plate that Ren so seemed to favor over his own face. Naturally, most of him was still obscured by the mask that was supplying him the oxygen he needed, but even with it on he seemed different. Softer, somehow. Like he might have been a different person once all the tension and anger had been smoothed from him.

It was utterly bizarre, in all honesty. Him floating there, loose and relaxed in the liquid when Hux had never once in five years seen Ren in any state that could be even generously described as placid. He was always vibrating with tension, like a barely-contained storm. Hux could never comprehend why Ren allowed himself to exist in such a state of volatility when a cool head wasted less effort and inspired fewer missteps, but Ren had made it clear from the beginning that Hux’s opinions would be welcomed only with hostility and that had always suited Hux just fine. Ren was many things, but useful was rarely one of them. The less he had to say to a man like that, the better.

He glanced down at the controls, ever so briefly allowing himself to toy with the idea of lowering the oxygen and watching as Ren slowly suffocated, as unknowing of his fate as he was helpless against it. The fantasy was fleeting, but it gave him a small measure of vindictive peace. Ren was always blatantly antagonistic, always complicating Hux’s work and getting away with his tantrums because, no matter what successes Hux achieved, Ren would always be the favorite.

It was the very reason why Ren was going to live while Hux was going to die.

This fool he was tasked with saving was _gifted_ , a pupil of Snoke’s ancient religion whereas Hux was just a soldier. An exceptional soldier, to be sure, but he had always known he could never compare. No matter the scope of his strategies, the cruelty of his plans, he could never make up for the value of what he lacked innately; That vast power that Ren so heavily relied on and had done nothing at all to deserve.

It was beyond infuriating. Though Hux knew himself to be in all other ways Ren’s superior, never but in a moment like this could he ever have achieved such a position of leverage over the knight. If Ren were awake now, even weakened as he might be, Hux had little doubt that the man could crush him at will. He had no defense against Ren’s power and he was very acutely aware that it would take little in the way of effort to finish him if that was ever what Ren decided to do.

 _Maybe he would,_ the quiet seemed to whisper. Maybe if Hux were to reach for that dial right now something of the power in Ren would know it and bring the knight crashing out of the sleep that Hux had sent him into. He imagined Ren’s eyes flying open, dark and angry, and he imagined looking into them as Ren stole the air from his lungs just as Hux might have stolen it from him. He wondered helplessly if being murdered by an half-dead Ren might not be better than whatever Snoke had planned for him.  He was afraid it might be.

But it didn’t matter, in the end.

He would never touch those controls.

He suddenly found himself wishing that the machinery would beep or whistle at him, despite that he usually found such mechanical noises abrasive. Surely anything would better than being so alone with his thoughts.

He folded his hands tightly behind him, focusing his attention on the way Ren’s dark curls floated in the bacta solution. It was annoying how his attention kept coming back to the man but between Ren and the silence, the knight was actually a preferable distraction. The black strands framed his cheeks with an almost gentle grace, swaying slightly in the imperfect stillness of the liquid.

It was the hair that had surprised him most the first time he had seen Ren without his helmet. It was a frivolous style, vain and attractive, and not at all the sort of thing Hux had been picturing as sitting beneath the knight’s garish mask.

The helmet itself was lost forever now, he supposed. Destroyed along with everything Hux had ever worked for.

Somehow, the thought very nearly made him smile.

He’d always hated that damn thing.

The sound of his own breath catching over a chuckle startled him, making him glance quickly around the space as though the noise could have come from anywhere but himself. It had sounded too loud and too close, hanging thickly in the stillness that he was finding so odious. He scowled up at Ren, as though it were the knight who were somehow responsible for the way he was now jumping at his own shadow.

“I don’t imagine it matters to you what they do with me,” he muttered to the tank. “I’m sure you’ll be very pleased once I’m gone.” 

He pushed the words out as he watched the knight, half expecting to see Ren smirking confirmation at him behind the glass, but Ren simply floated, undisturbed and unaware of the crisis that Hux was experiencing quite literally beneath his nose. Ren would have been positively gleeful to see him this way, he knew, but he was suddenly bafflingly unsure whether the the knight’s leering would have made him feel better or worse.

A small part of him wished that Ren would wake up so that he could find out.

Hux stuffed a hand in his pocket, ripping the datapad out with more force than he’d intended. This was truly getting out of hand. He needed to get his head back on straight or he was going to go mad.

He swiped a finger over the user-recognition pad, praying that there was something, _anything_ that he could still do. Layers of screens sprang to life before him and he flicked through them almost desperately, searching, but too many of the tasks that he had once filled his time with had become obsolete with the death of his weapon. He also had received updates that all survivors of the collapse had rendezvoused with the _Finalizer_ , as per the escape plan, so not even they needed him now.

It seemed that there was literally nothing that was required of him now except to wait. The knowledge felt even more like a death sentence than Snoke’s continued silence.

He sank onto the stool, gripping the sides until he felt the sudden tremor in his fingers start to dissipate.

Why could he not cope with this?

Perhaps it was because he had always believed that he was destined for something greater and for a brief, glorious moment it had felt like he might actually be able to reach it. He had watched his destiny take form in the red flare of the Starkiller and then a handful of children had stolen it away from him. They had made it look easy. The bitterness of that pill was almost too much to swallow, but at the same time the reason unfolding inside him was far simpler.

He wanted to live.

 _Gods help me,_ he thought, the realization cresting over him. _I want to live._

He leaned in against the tank, pressing his cheek to the thick glass and letting its coolness soothe over the searing splinters of his thoughts. He didn’t care that it looked assuredly foolish. There was no one here to see. 

The noise of the liquid amplified through the glass at his ear created a comforting bubble of sound in the otherwise silent room and he felt himself relax against it, if only slightly.

Hux closed his eyes.

_What a thing to realize now, of all times._

~~~

He awoke with a start when the machine he was leaning against cheerfully whistled its patient’s return to consciousness. 

He cast a quick look at the time readout on the tank’s console, a pang of concern shooting through him. It was still two hours too early for Ren to be awake and it had been drilled into him over the course of his training that snubbing a doctor’s timeframe was the fastest way to re-aggravate a condition. 

That made this a problem. 

Ren was never going to stay in the tank.

Hux stood as the knight’s eyelids began to flutter, making a quick attempt to neaten the rumpled disaster of his uniform before giving up. After everything it had been through in the last twenty-four hours it was probably beyond any help, but he couldn’t help but feel less than dressed like this. And though Ren could hardly look down on anyone else for their choice in clothing, it was a matter of personal pride. One that he would apparently have to forgo for the rest of his foreseeable future.

When he looked up again Ren’s eyes were open and trained hazily on him. Hux didn’t need the Force to assume that the knight was already upset about something or other. It was hardly a novel concept. He was actually amazed that the contents of the medical bay weren’t already crumpling in around him, but he couldn’t trust for that streak to hold. Ren needed to stay in that tank and Hux needed to be able to say that he had done everything in his power to keep him there when Ren didn’t.

He reached for the sedative option on the panel, fully expecting that some attack of the Force would prevent him, but to his surprise his hand found the console without incident. He wasn’t sure why, but he let his finger hover over the button for a moment, waiting, but Ren only watched him. The knight’s eyes looked clouded and unfocused through the glass of the tank but it was clear to Hux that he understood what was happening. Ren gave the tiniest shake of his head, and Hux paused. Ren was asking not to be sedated. Actually asking. It had practically been polite.

Hux took exactly one second to weigh that request. He could hardly construe that small movement as a vow not to destroy anything on the ship – this tank as the closest, most salient example – nor could he assume it held as a promise that the knight would stay put and do as he was told. His answer was simple enough to reach: it wasn’t a chance he could afford to take.

He pressed the button.

Ren’s eyes blinked frightened betrayal at him as the gas flooded through the tank’s breather mask, his gaze never once leaving Hux until the weight of the drugs in his system finally forced him under again.

Hux ignored the strange tug of guilt in his gut. Ren would be grateful for it when he could walk across a room without his stomach falling out, and if he wasn’t then at least he would be whole. Hux had a job to do. He wasn’t going to screw up this one last thing simply because Ren had almost seemed human for a moment.

The door to the adjoining room opened and the doctor stumbled out, blinking in the stark lighting and looking just as rumpled as Hux felt.

“He’s awake…?” he mumbled, peering through the glass as though Ren’s lack of movement was due to a problem with his eyes and not the patient. “Doesn’t look like it.”

“No, I sedated him. He woke too early.”

That seemed to rouse him. He checked the time readout and then turned to study Hux’s face, his lips pressed together. “Did he attempt to get out?”

“He would have,” Hux said evenly. “I know this man.”

“That’s not how we…”

Hux almost laughed. As if the humanitarian nonsense these doctors practiced could possibly apply to someone like Ren. 

“I don’t imagine you’d know this, doctor, but the best way to stop a Force-user from doing something is to see to it that they never start. The moment Lord Ren had decided that he wanted out of that thing he would have _been_ out, and nothing that you or I might have done could have stopped him then. I’ve done you a favor. You may now continue to treat your patient in relative peace.”

The doctor’s mouth opened, and then his gaze traced down to where Hux realized the glass had printed a patch of red into his cheek during the bout of sleep he hadn't meant to fall into. He raised his chin, daring the other man to say anything about it, but the man’s eyes only went soft with understanding which, as it turned out, was a thousand times worse.

The doctor opened his mouth again and this time Hux found himself speaking instead, rushing to beat out the words that he knew were coming.

“Well. Now that you’re awake I think I’ll take your earlier suggestion for rest. I trust that you can keep things in hand here for an hour or so, I shouldn’t need much more than that befor––”

The doctor waved the words away. There was a part of Hux that hadn’t been expecting to be allowed to get away with his childishness, but the man seemed more amused than anything. “I’ll manage,” he said simply. “So how about you take several.”

Hux wanted to argue that he wouldn’t need so much, but the heaviness in his limbs wouldn’t let him give voice to the lie. Instead he simply nodded his thanks before adding, “Notify me of any major changes in his condition. This man is still my responsibility until I can see him safely to our Leader. I’ll need to know if he wakes again.”

“All right,” but he looked less pleased to agree this time. It felt like a personal victory, though Hux knew he was being obtuse to think so. Something about the thought of this man trying to look out for him felt, to his mind, like losing, and he’d done far too much of that already to stand for it.

 ~~~

Hux made it a point not to let his feet drag as he made his way down the short corridor toward the cockpit. He was as exhausted as though the unexpected nap against Ren’s tank had counted for nothing, though he approximated that he had been out for almost three hours. He didn’t remember a moment of it, not even falling asleep, and he rubbed at a sore spot on his neck as he hoped that whatever sleep he managed now might have at least a little more impact.

He performed only the most perfunctory of checks with the remaining crew, but everything seemed to be well in hand. They had established shifts for sleeping and Hux noted dimly that AC5719 must have been on rest rotation with the pilot, since it was the two other regular troopers who currently occupied the cockpit.

The trooper in the pilot’s seat – Hux couldn’t get a clear view of his designation in the cramped space – informed him that on their current course they would rendezvous with the _Citadel_ in approximately twelve standard hours. He was proud that he managed not to flinch at the news, and then immediately annoyed with himself for thinking that that was somehow an accomplishment that qualified pride. Surely he had more than indulged in his moment of pathetic wallowing. It was time to move on.

He nodded his approval to the troopers before making his way to the small private room at the back of the ship. It was tiny and bare, no bigger than the little room the doctor had slept in, but it was separated from most of the relevant facilities onboard which made it ideal.

He immediately stripped out of his uniform once the door had shut behind him, depositing all the pieces into the small sterilization unit by the bed. It was beyond hope, he knew. He doubted that the abused fabric could be saved at this point, even if he had had access to the proper facilities and cleaning treatments. The lights in the small unit would do little more than disinfect the cloth, but it was all he had to wear and this would at least give him some peace of mind. Not much of course, but he would take what he could get.

He looked down at himself and immediately grimaced when he caught sight of the uneven, rust-colored stains that blanketed his torso. Every atom was begging to simply drop into the bed and be done with it, but he couldn’t. Not with the suggestion of Kylo Ren’s injuries still painted over his skin.

He trudged over to the refresher, ignoring his limbs as they protested each step. Maybe he would feel better once all this grime was washed away, anyway.

He clicked the settings of the small shower unit to sonic and then allowed his posture to go lax as the vibrations poured over him, scouring his skin of all the unpleasantness of the last twenty-four hours. He tried to visualize all the clutter in his mind falling away with it. All the discomfort and anxiety that had been plaguing him – he pictured it tearing away from his skin to disintegrate in the air around him. Becoming nothing but dust.

It actually helped, somewhat, and just that much was enough to make him feel as though he had recovered some of his agency. When he stepped back into the small bedroom, skin still tingling from the sonic, he felt more like himself than he had since before this whole fiasco began. It was impossible to put words to the relief. He couldn’t remember the last time that he had felt so out of control of himself as he had in that room with Ren, and he resolved to never let himself sink that far into it again.

As he sagged gratefully onto the mattress he reached a dim recognition that his control was probably no longer the perfect thing that it had once been but, as true sleep moved to envelop him, this somehow didn’t feel like the earth-shattering revelation that it might have been. What did it matter anyhow? He could keep himself together well enough to accept the fate that was handed to him and after that there would be nothing at all.

_I can do this,_ was his last, hazy thought before he was swept away into unconsciousness. _There is nothing else to do._

 


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So this one stops in what I feel is a lousy spot, but if I didn't do it there then these next two chapters would have had to become one monstrous 10k chapter and that seemed a touch overwhelming. Or something... behhhhh.

The chime on his datapad sounded loudly from where he had placed it on the mattress, jerking him awake with a small gasp. He squinted at the timestamp and then rubbed a hand over his eyes when the light made him wince. According to the readout it had been only two and some-odd hours since he laid down, and while he had been expecting the summons he had privately hoped that it might not have come quite so soon.

He blinked a few times to adjust his vision and scooped up the little device, already anticipating the message that was awaiting him there.

- _Lord Ren is fully coherent. Fairly enraged, too. He’s refusing further treatment, any recommendations?_

Hux ignored the fact that there was probably a certain amount of pointedness in that final question and sighed, already groping for his uniform in the sterilization unit as he muttered the lights up to thirty percent. It could never be easy with Ren. He tapped out a quick return message before dressing himself:

_-Do not engage him. I will be there momentarily. If you need to vacate the space for your own safety then do so._

He couldn’t have Ren killing the only trained medic available to them. The fool had no concept of asset management.

He fastened all the straps and buttons more through muscle-memory than sight and only allowed himself a second's irritation at the uniform’s still abysmal condition before he swept out the door, barking the lights off as he went.

It was truly fortunate that the walk to the medical bay was such a short one. Hux realized that he didn’t actually trust that doctor to behave with a sense of self-preservation any more than he expected Ren to behave with a sense of self-control.

He slapped the sensor on the door open, striding in to what he considered a frankly trifling total of three shattered bottles of important-looking materials, their brothers still trembling dangerously on the shelves. The bacta tank, somehow, was miraculously unharmed. Ren himself was sat up on the medical cot in the corner, a haphazard mess of bandages tangled around his sides and an uneven but fully-healed scar winding down his face and neck. He was shouting at the doctor which, more than anything else, signaled the knight’s return to some moderate form of health. There was no more of that unnerving, quiet humanity. This furious creature was the Ren that Hux was familiar with.

He broke off his tirade when Hux entered the room, whirling to spit a venomous “ _You,_ ” in his direction.

Hux raised a single eyebrow. “Is there a problem, Lord Ren?”

“My saber, your _drugs_ have addled my––I can’t sense it. Return it to me.”

And that was very nearly amusing. “So that you can destroy what few facilities we have available? This is a small craft Ren, one of your precious little tantrums here might kill us all. Your weapon will be restored to you in good time. For now, you are to allow this man to rehabilitate you to what might loosely be called a useful condition. Surely even you can manage that. All that’s required of you is to sit.” He was relieved at how easily the words came. This part at least, was familiar to him. He’d often thought that he could argue with Ren in his sleep.

An invisible hand on the front of his tunic tugged him forward a few steps. 

“I don’t answer to you.” Ren’s voice was deep, it seemed, and smoother than the modulator would have led Hux to believe. He raised his chin, meeting the flame in Ren’s eyes with as much steel as he could muster.

“No, never to me. But you do answer to Snoke, do you not? Your training is to be completed, we are en route to deliver you to his flagship as we speak. If you wish to face him in your current sorry condition then by all means, continue your little fit. You can explain to him how you wasted your time here when he finds you useless for whatever he has planned.”

The grip on his front vanished and Hux stumbled forward another half-step before he caught himself, surprised at Ren’s retreat. A very small part of him had always relished their fights for the very reason that the knight never gave him an inch of ground without needing it to be torn from his bloodied fingers first, but when he caught sight of him now Ren looked pale, though Hux reminded himself that that was probably the blood loss talking. He also seemed just as surprised as Hux that his grip had failed and was making no attempt to cover it.

“He...sent for me?” There was no mistaking the hesitance in Ren’s tone, and suddenly his face seemed to be on the verge of that strange softness Hux had observed while he had been floating in the tank. “But I…” His eyes flicked over to the wall. “Is he––did he seem angry?”

Hux wanted to laugh in his face. _Oh, so you’re afraid to face our Leader,_ he thought with more venom than he’d intended. _Get in fucking line, you child._

Ren didn’t seem to notice that mental bullet zipping past his head, though, so Hux figured he probably wasn’t doing that little trick of his at the moment. Just as well, really. Hux’s head was a mess and the last thing he thought he could handle was for Ren to know it, too.

“I wouldn’t presume to know the Supreme Leader’s mind,” was all he said in response, though this was, in part, a lie. He didn’t know what Snoke had planned for Ren, but he was certain that the knight would not share his own fate. Snoke would never be angry enough for that. Not with Ren.

The knight in question seemed lost in thought, his brow furrowed as one hand tugged absent-mindedly over the bandages at his side. When he finally spoke it was without looking up, though his dismissive gesture encompassed both Hux and the doctor.

“Leave me. I must meditate on this.”

Hux’s irritation flared hotter at the man’s casual presumptuousness. “No. I’ve just told you that you’re to––”

Kylo’s head snapped up, then. His eyes were wide and dark. _Afraid_ , Hux’s mind whispered. He wished it felt more satisfying.

“ _What could you possibly understand?_ ”

Hux briefly fancied that he could feel the ship shudder slightly amidst this new explosion from Kylo Ren, though he was likely imagining it. Ren seemed to be having some difficulty with his magic tricks at the moment, and the residual clump of guilt in his gut reminded Hux that that was probably his fault for drugging Ren the way he had, not once, but twice now.

 _Good,_ he thought with as much contempt as he could summon. _If anyone deserves a taste of helplessness, it’s that one,_ but the guilt only faded, it didn’t dissipate entirely. He covered it with anger instead.

Ren was still ranting at him, the bottles on the shelves reaching a crescendo in their rattling counterpoint to the knight’s agitation. 

“…you orders are meaningless. I don’t need your damn medicine, I require _guidance_. I must––”

“My orders come from _Snoke_ ,” Hux reiterated, though he wasn’t sure how the knight might have missed that part. His thoughts lingered over the Supreme Leader’s silence with him, and he childishly hoped that Ren would receive the same if he went in search of answers.

“Then you misunderstand them.” Ren’s voice was sharp on conviction. “You people can only see what you’re told. How can you expect to govern me when all you know how to do is wait for orders and then repeat them? You are nothing without them, know nothing on your own.”

It struck too close to home. Hux felt himself go numb with the dread that Ren had somehow managed to creep inside his head despite the difficulties with his powers and found himself hissing out a response before he’d even given any thought to what he might say.

“What I know is that you’re a pathetic, sniveling fool who can’t be arsed see past his own skull for even half a damn moment. You think you can see so much? Why couldn’t you see the danger in the oscillator when you had a chance to actually make a difference in our fight? Why couldn’t you do anything but fall to your enemies? I might have just left you there, on that base. I _should_ have. For all the good you do anybody.”

He honestly wished he had, for a moment. The sudden malice of it felt good in his chest.

He’d hoped the barbs might at least slow the knight down, but Ren of course ignored all the agonizing reality that Hux had thrown at him to fire back a childish, “And defy a direct order? That would almost be worth dying to see, _General_.”

Hux felt his lip twist. Really, it was too much. “Are you mocking my loyalty now, Ren?” It came out as ice. “Though I suppose that should hardly be surprising, given everything you’ve done.”

The angry rattling of the bottles went deathly still.

Ren stared at him, shocked, his mouth going soft on something that looked like anguish and Hux stared back, working to conceal his own surprise.

He hadn’t meant to say that, hadn’t meant to imply the thing that he knew Ren had heard, but he’d be damned if he was going backtrack now, with Kylo fucking Ren of all people.

The guilt curled back into him full force and the sheer injustice of that made him want to spit because he didn’t want to care that Ren suddenly looked like a beaten child; furious and frightened and hurting all at once. He didn’t want to feel _anything_ for the man who was going to watch as Snoke killed him. Who wouldn’t lift a finger to stop it.

He glared across the room at the way Ren’s face was twisting through a sea of tangled emotion, determined not to show regret and daring the other man to speak, to get angry again, to say _anything_ instead of sitting there like that looking so damn _lost_...

The doctor was the one to break the silence.

“Okay, I don’t know what’s going on here, but you both need more rest than you’ve gotten. Whatever this is, it’s going wait until you’ve recovered some strength. _Both_ of you,” he emphasized, with a pointed look at Hux.

Ren said nothing, seemed not to notice that anyone had spoken, but Hux knew a dismissal when he heard one and for once he was grateful to take it. He turned on his heel, taking quick steps towards the exit in something that couldn’t exactly be called a retreat, but felt far too close to one for his own liking.

He stopped just shy of passing through doors, his hand catching on the archway as though something had just occurred to him.

“There’s a second room near my quarters,” he said without turning around. “Put him there, when he can walk. It’s...comfortable. There’s nothing there to break.”

He didn’t wait to hear the doctor’s response. Couldn’t stand to, though of course that made no sense. He stepped into the hall and was momentarily swamped by an almost giddy relief as the door slid home behind him, cutting him off from their gaze. 

He pressed a hand to his mouth, breathing in through his fingers and then pulled them away again to look down at them, realizing that he’d never once done such a stupid thing in his entire adult life. At this point he felt beyond trying to understand what was happening to him. Apparently it was simply his destiny to quietly fall apart until Snoke decided to put him out of his misery.

He rubbed the flat of his hand against the hapless sag of his jodhpurs––as though he could wipe away some proof of the action along with the lingering sensation his lips had left printed across his skin––and took only a few steps down the corridor before pulling himself up short again.

Where was he even going?

He could go back to his little room, certainly. Get some more of the rest that his body was still crying out for, but somehow returning to that space now just seemed like waiting for Ren. The two rooms were close, sitting next to each other in the cramped space available on the ship and Hux knew that he would be pulled from sleep if Ren were moved into that second space just as surely as he knew that Ren would sense him waking. Irrationally, this seemed like worst thing that could happen. He couldn’t go back there.

At the same time, of course, there was nowhere else to be.

The cockpit was out of the question. Crowding the small space when there was nothing to do would be worse than ineffectual and he certainly couldn’t turn around and return to the medical bay. He didn’t think he’d ever set foot in that space again, for whatever reason. Nothing good came of being there.

There was really only one place for him now, it seemed, and it was hardly much of one at all.

He let his feet carry him forwards, refusing to look at the two doors that sat next to one another as he passed. Why had he said that? Why even make that suggestion? He didn’t know if the doctor would listen, but he suspected that he would. Somehow, it seemed like exactly the kind of foolish request that the other man would be only too happy to sanction, though Hux’s basis for that vague accusation was admittedly limited. The man seemed to have a knack for irritation, but was clearly competent in his work. He hadn’t seemed afraid of Ren, either, which was entirely uncommon among the staff.  Hux wasn’t sure what to make of that.

The sight of the small viewport unknotted some of the tension that had taken up residence along his spine. Space, at least, he could count on. Even if everything else seemed to be devolving into nonsense, the view outside would always be cold and black and unforgiving. It was a comforting thought and he tried to ground himself in it as he approached, his eyes tracing over the long lines that the stars drew as they blurred away.

It was exactly the same view as it had been when he stood here what now seemed like an extended nightmare ago, with the cracking collapse of the Starkiller still ringing in his ears and the damp of Ren’s blood still fresh against his skin.

He had almost ordered them to turn back in those first few moments, although his memories of the thoughts were cloudy and ill-formed, like they had belonged to someone else.  There had been a deep, capricious part of him that had wanted to see it for himself. To gaze out on the rubble of what he had built and drown himself in it until the knowledge of its ruin solidified in his mind.

He thought he’d fallen far, then. How little he had known.

Without entirely meaning to, he found his thoughts drifting back toward the small medical room. He wondered if Ren was cooperating at all with that doctor or if he had simply reverted back to breaking things and screaming once Hux had left the room. The latter seemed far more likely, but would he even be told if Ren started another rampage?

The image of Ren’s stricken face bloomed, unbidden in his mind.

No, he wouldn’t be summoned back.

He should be pleased, he supposed. The knight could be someone else’s responsibility for a change, but with everything gone and nothing more to do than stare at the stars, it was beginning to seem like Ren was all he had left think about.

Certainly he’d done little else since rescuing the man, in one capacity or another.

He sifted through what he knew about the other man and found it calming now that the knight’s actual presence was away from him, carefully cataloguing all the various bits of practical knowledge at his disposal. Ren’s height, weight, parentage, homeworld... all the things that had been present in the personal file that only Hux had had a security clearance high enough to read. There were also things that the file hadn’t been able to adequately convey, of course. Things that Hux had only come to gain an understanding of through exposure, such as the vast power that Ren wielded and the absolutely deplorable temperament that governed it.

There were other things, too. More recently learned.

Ren feared sedation, couldn’t control his power with the drugs in his blood. Ren had full lips and a mismatched face that somehow managed to be just as arresting as it was jarring, and he looked young without his mask. Ren felt anguish over killing his father.

The guilt twisted in him again and he wrenched his thoughts in a different direction.

He thought instead about the mask that was now likely melted and twisted into nothing more than trash, floating as just another indiscernible piece of rubble in the empty space the Starkiller had left behind.

He wouldn’t mourn it, though he knew Ren hated to be seen without. Hux had always found it to be an ugly, tacky thing. It was a gimmick he’d thought someone as purportedly powerful as Ren should have little need of when it came to inspiring fear, and had always assumed that Ren had worn the thing to look impressive, or that it was just a product of the man’s blind idolization of his dead grandfather. He still suspected those things played into it now, but after seeing Ren today another thought was tugging at him.

Ren was hiding.

Expressions, little tells… Hux had caught so many on the knight in the span of their brief interaction. He knew from what he had read that Ren’s religion preached a surrender to one’s emotions, but this seemed to go beyond that.  Ren’s eyes, his face...even his voice gave things away. They betrayed him as vulnerable in a world where vulnerability existed to be crushed, and an unwilling understanding settled around Hux’s shoulders. Ren needed that mask. And it was destroyed.

But surely it wouldn’t matter now. 

Ren was going to Snoke, and although Hux understood little of the strange ties that bound the two of them, it had always been made an unstated kind of clear that the Supreme Leader knew everything of his apprentice, like Ren was an open text for him to page through at will. Ren hardly needed his metal shield to face his master, and Hux had little doubt that Ren would be indulged in his need for a second one when the time came. That was, if he didn’t have another hidden away somewhere already.

That last thought almost made him snort. He pictured Ren hiding great stores of ugly helmets in various locations across the galaxy; aboard starships and on planets, hoarding them the way other creatures might hoard food.

The corner of his mouth twitched upward at the sheer ridiculousness of the image. It only served to confirm that there was little point in speculating. Ren, of course, would be fine, although Hux found himself irritated that he would never get to see the mask’s replacement or know where it came from. 

Not that Ren would have told him anyway, if he had lived.

In the meantime the knight would simply have to see with his own eyes and speak with his own voice, and it wasn’t even a bad voice, Hux realized distantly. It was childish when he shouted, but when Ren had spoken softly it had held a richness that Hux thought he wouldn’t mind hearing again. It was the kind of voice that it was easy to imagine nearby, whispering. The sort that seemed to belong in dim rooms among tangled sheets, and…

He pressed his forehead against the viewport in sudden alarm, willing the thoughts to leave him because this, more than anything else, was madness.

His cheeks were going hot, dyeing themselves red with an ugly concoction of disgust at the thing he’d just been considering and a profound desire to continue doing it. He’d seen a very large amount of Ren in that tank today, but even before, with him hidden away under all those ridiculous layers it had been obvious that the knight was well-suited to Hux’s particular tastes. He was tall, broad where Hux liked them broad and clearly trained to craftsmanlike perfection. It had always seemed like such a waste.

And Ren… Ren had watched him. Hux had seen it and beyond that, he’d _felt_ him. Pawing through his thoughts, digging up his...proclivities, though whether due to childish shyness or some unknown aspect of his strange religion Ren had never acted on his knowledge, despite the tang of interest that had always seemed to linger in Hux’s mind after Ren had left.

Thankfully these _incidents_ had been rare, and Hux had been relieved that Ren never approached him. The knight was a volatile disgrace of a human being and entanglements with people like that were always more trouble than they ended up being worth, regardless of whatever talent a man with his particular gifts might bring to the bedroom. It was bad enough dealing with Ren’s temper, Hux didn’t think he could have handled his attachment as well.

But it was very difficult to make any of those arguments, now.

As if the very thought had somehow summoned them, Hux heard movement down at the far end of the corridor at his back, because of course, _of course_ they would be here now. At first there was just indistinct shuffling but soon he could pick out the doctor’s careful footsteps as they moved slowly towards him, accompanied by a halting, heavy gait that could only be Ren’s.

He quickly dug his datapad out of his pocket. Feigning absorption, he checked the time readout. Apparently it had been nearly an hour since he’d left Ren alone with the doctor. It didn’t seem possible, but the way the time had blurred in his head hardly shocked him at this point. He just felt tired, as if he had finally been drained of the capacity for horror at each new weakness that presented itself.

He stared blankly down at the screen, just listening.

The footsteps slowed as they approached the door and there was a pause where Hux thought he could almost sense the doctor’s reproachful look on the back of his neck. For a moment he felt like a guilty child caught out of bed when he was meant to be asleep, but the very thought made him scoff. He very nearly turned around, but didn’t. Turning around would mean seeing Ren, and he wasn’t prepared to subscribe to his mind’s insane fantasy that he actually wanted to do that.  

Not yet.

The door hissed open, the footsteps disappeared inside.

Hux silently counted off the minutes before the door opened again, this time with only one set of feet leaving. Eight and thirty-six seconds. Pointless, pointless knowledge.

“I thought I told you to rest,” sighed the doctor coming to a halt at his side.

“You did,” agreed Hux, sparing the man a brief sideways glance before turning his attention out again. He felt uninterested in maintaining the polite eye-contact that conversation usually required, but the other man seemed content to stare out the viewport with him, watching the stars. He was nearly of a height with Hux, though probably approaching a decade older. Somehow he hadn’t noticed before.

“So why didn’t you?”

The man’s tone was casual. Hux wanted to hate him.

“What’s your name?” he asked abruptly instead of answering. It suddenly seemed absurd that he didn’t know.

The man huffed out a laugh, apparently not offended at having his question evaded. “Pons,” he said, and Hux immediately regretted asking. The name suited the man perfectly. He disliked it intensely.

“Just...Pons?” he said carefully.

“It’s the one I like,” the other man shrugged by way of confirmation. “Fits, doesn’t it?” He grinned like he knew he had somehow echoed Hux’s own thoughts.

“It’s...somehow appropriate,” Hux admitted, and the doctor–– _Pons_ , he begrudgingly amended––laughed.

“You’re never going to use it, are you?”

“If I can avoid it, I think.” He felt his lips attempting to quirk upward and flattened his expression as best he could, though he got the sneaking suspicion that the man knew without looking. Like he had a touch of Ren’s power in him, though Hux knew it was impossible. The Order screened for Force-sensitivity in training at Snoke’s behest, no matter what the field, but it was so rare for one to actually turn up that the protocols on what to do with them were rather vague. Certainly Hux could not recall ever asking. There had never been a need.

“You know, I think I just might like you, General.” The doctor––apparently _Pons_ was just too ridiculous to use even in his own head––shrugged, exaggerating it just enough for Hux to catch without turning to look. “Somehow.”

Hux had an unfortunate, niggling suspicion that he might agree. Somehow.

“But hey,” suddenly the man turned to look at him, serious and compelling Hux to meet his gaze for the first time since he’d approached. He nodded towards the doors down the hall and Hux’s stomach dropped an inch. “He’s in there, and I haven’t coded the door or anything. But.” He looked seriously at Hux. “No more shouting matches, okay? You’re both a little ragged around the edges right now and if I had my way you’d both sleep the whole trip from here to wherever, but when your patients are young and stubborn apparently there’s only so much you can do.”

So Ren was awake in there. Interesting.

Hux sniffed back towards the viewport, beating down the irrational fear that this intuitive man was picking his thoughts from his brain as he had them. It was impossible. Even if he had managed to slip through the testing process, surely Ren would have noticed. Force-users were supposed to be naturally in-tune with one another, or some nonsense like that. Snoke certainly seemed that way with Ren. “I’m not sure why you imagine that I’ll want to continue to speak to him, but I’ll keep it in mind.”

“That’s all I ask,” the man said agreeably.

After another few moments of pleasant, but artfully meaningless chatter the doctor excused himself, making some flippant comment about taking his own advice and sleeping the rest of the ride. Hux surprised himself by hoping he was able to, then forced himself to make a slow count of one hundred after he’d heard the last of of the man’s footfalls ringing out against the floor, making certain he wasn’t coming back.

Finally, he allowed himself to turn and face the door that now housed Ren.

He had thought his conversation with Pons might deter him from his earlier thoughts, but somehow the course of talking with the other man had ended up feeling like permission.  Even if Ren sent him away, what was that in the face of everything else? Whatever might play out on this ship, nothing would change once they reached the _Citadel_. He had no reason not to try, no reason to run from seeing if he might not have this one thing for himself before everything else was taken away.

Even so, he found his steps hesitating, slowing down to halt when he reached the panel that would allow him into the small room. He wondered if Ren could sense him out here, and knew that the answer was _probably so_. He had no idea how long it might take for Ren’s power to recover from the sedatives, but he had obviously been able to wield at least some of it back in the medical room. That trick of sensing ‘energy’ as he called it had always seemed to be one of Ren’s most effortless tasks and Hux felt irrationally sure that Ren could do it, _was_ doing it, and that he was only embarrassing himself by squirming out in the hall like some first-offender who was too afraid to face their CO.

 _So I was waiting for him after all,_ Hux mused humorlessly as he reached for the control panel, tapping the entry key and stepping inside before he was able to think better of it. 

 _This is a terrible idea_.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Still tumblin', still doing it [here](http://countofeight.tumblr.com/).


	4. Chapter 4

Ren was awake on the bed just as he had been counting on, and for the blink of a second Hux stalled beneath the durasteel frame, confronted by his intentions at last, before taking the final step inside and allowing the door slide home behind him. The sheets pooled around Ren’s hips as he sat in what Hux could only assume was a meditative position, calling attention to his bare torso.  Hux noticed that the bandages at his side were wrapped in a much more orderly fashion than they’d been the last time he had seen him. Ren seemed to be thinking of that last encounter, too, if the way his expression was darkening was any indication.

“General,” he greeted icily, but this time Hux didn’t want that kind of fight. He toed out of his boots and stepped quickly across the room, determined not to lose his nerve as Kylo’s brows climbed higher on his face. He didn’t stop at the bed, instead settling both his knees on the soft surface and immediately reaching for a handful of the other man’s dark curls.

When he claimed it, Ren’s mouth tasted of bitterness masked by sickly sweet – likely a product of whatever concoctions that doctor had poured down his throat in order to deem him fit for movement – but that, too, was satisfying in its own way. He pressed on, biting at the soft swell of Ren’s lower lip and trying not to panic as the knight sat like a stone beneath him, completely motionless as Hux kissed him harder, willing him to do _something_ even if it was just to push him away because he was making a fool of himself like this but he couldn’t seem to _stop…_

He gasped with relief when Ren’s tongue finally licked up to meet his, warm and hungry in the space between their teeth. 

He threw himself forward, trying to cover every inch of the other man that he could and Ren pulled him in, crushing them together with enough sudden force to knock the air from his lungs, his large hands moving over the disheveled uniform in a way that made all the latent heat in Hux’s blood surge outward at once. He allowed the smallest of sounds to disappear behind Ren’s lips. Gods, but he had needed this…

And then suddenly Ren was pushing him away, the iron vice of his grip now holding Hux at bay instead of in where he needed to be. He snarled quietly, straining forward in a useless effort to reclaim even a taste of that contact.

“You think you’re going to die.”

And damn if _that_ didn’t bring him up short. He went still in Ren’s grip, wanting to deny it and knowing he couldn’t. He glared down at the sheets. He’d thought––hoped, really––that maybe that particular talent might still be offline or, even more stupidly, that Ren would somehow just leave it alone.

“That’s why you’re doing this.” Ren was saying. “You...you think that Snoke is going to have you killed.”

Hux would have laughed if his throat had been working correctly. The knight very nearly sounded upset.

He sank back onto his heels on the bed, angry and more afraid than he was willing to admit. Why couldn’t Ren just let him have this? Why did he have to try and ruin this for him too when he may never…

“What should it matter to you why I’m doing this,” he lashed out in lieu of finishing his thought. “I know you’ve wanted it. You were never very subtle in your prying.”

“It doesn’t matter,” Ren threw back quickly. “Of course it doesn’t. It’s just…”

Ren’s eyes seemed like they were looking straight through him and suddenly Hux regretted ever entering this room. Of course it would turn out this way. Of _course_ Ren would be able to strip the truth from him and beat him with it when all he had needed was a damn _distraction_ ––

He sucked in a quiet breath and held it, _two...three...four…_ only releasing it again when the sudden storm in his chest had receded slightly. It would never be gone. Not until this whole charade ended as it inevitably must, but until then he could at least hold himself together in front of Ren, of all people. It seemed important that he at least manage that much.

He opened his eyes, realizing that they must have fallen shut in his attempts to calm himself and instantly annoyed by it. Bad enough that Ren could apparently sense his distress without him catching visual confirmation of it as well, but the knight was looking away from him now, hesitant. It looked strange, but the expression somehow seemed very at home on his peculiar features. Like all those soft lines and strange angles had been made to fit into that exact shape.

“Hux.” He was worrying at his lip now. The sight was almost distracting enough to keep Hux from startling at the use of his name. “I haven’t seen… That is. Snoke may not…”

“Oh, _don’t,_ ” he snarled, sudden and harsher than he’d intended, but the unexpected attempt at comfort on Ren’s lips filled his stomach with a watery sensation that felt very like sickness. “I don’t want to hear that… that _garbage_ from you.”

He didn’t. Not when Ren was so kriffing special, so irreplaceable a piece in the Supreme Leader’s galactic machinations that not even this failure could threaten him. He had his life, he had his precious _Force._ Ren would walk away from this, brushing the dust of the _Starkiller_ from those ridiculous robes as he went.

Hux wondered if he would even be allowed a proper First Order cremation after they’d finished making an example out of him, or if they’d just space him on the spot like some filthy traitor.

Ren flinched away from him, his eyes going far away and Hux knew that he’d heard that one. He couldn’t bring himself to care. It served him right.

One of the large, ungloved hands reached for him, but Hux knocked it away.

“Get out of my head,” he snapped tiredly. “I thought that wasn’t supposed to be working right now, anyway.” 

Ren merely shook his dark curls, uncharacteristically subdued.

“You’re so _loud_ ,” he breathed, fingers finally making contact with Hux’s cheek. “My powers are returning but I can’t… It’s like you’re _making_ me hear you.”

“I don’t want your excuses.” Fuck, but he was tired. Tired of everything. Tired of all the games and the strategies, tired of all the fucking talking…

“I could spea––”

“ _I said don’t_.”

He found himself suddenly furious and Ren stilled immediately. Oh, so the knight was listening to him now? Maybe he could taste Hux’s anger steeping in through his mystic little gift. Maybe Hux simply looked that incensed. Either way, his patience was done. He would find something else to occupy his time.

He shoved hard at Ren’s shoulder, sliding himself towards the edge of the mattress. “I didn’t come here here to discuss my fate with you, of all people, _Lord_ _Ren_. It’s clear you have interest in little else, so it would be for the best if we just forget this exchange entirely. You will be contacted once we have reached the _Citadel_ and have received instruction from the Supreme Leader. I’ll see myself out.”

The toes of one foot settled on the floor, but before the second could join it the weight of Ren’s hand locked around his forearm, jerking him unceremoniously to a halt. He didn’t turn back, kept his eyes fixed on the door as from behind him he heard the knight murmuring darkly, _“Me of all people…?”_

The stationary weight on his arm began pulling then, dragging him in, and Hux slipped backwards over the sheets, angry and still but not bothering to fight it until Ren’s teeth sank into the tense line of muscle where his shoulder met his neck. He gasped, writhing. This wasn’t a teasing nip or anything like what he had experienced with others. Ren was _biting_ him. Hard enough to make a whine threaten at the back of his clenched teeth. Hard enough for the skin under his much-abused uniform to darken and welt under the force of it. It _hurt_.

Hux never wanted him to stop.

Ren pulled back then, of course, but Hux hardly had time for disappointment before the knight’s voice was tickling heat into his ear.

“Me, of all people…” He repeated it again, growling it in Hux’s ear like a mantra. “ _Me, of all people?_ But you did come here to _fuck_ me, of all people, did you not General?”

Hux felt immediate, reactive heat blister through him; the shock of the words rippling out across his skin, making him shudder with them. Helpless in a way that finally felt good.

He was half-hard already from just the bite, all the urgency of earlier pouring back into him as Ren’s fingers trailed down his arms. Verbal confirmation seemed laughably pointless in light of the way that Ren could watch the feelings move through his mind, but when he turned to try and shove their mouths together in answer, Ren held him back.

“Yes, all right? Is that what you want to hear?” he snapped a little breathlessly when it became clear that Ren wasn’t going to let him near again without saying anything. He considered his next words more carefully, as though only the things he actually said counted for anything. “I came here for you––for this. You’ve… we’ve both wanted it, haven’t we? I’ll probably be dead tomorrow. I thought maybe we could at least have it once, before then.”

Ren’s brows snapped together. Apparently he hadn’t been supposed to mention the part where he died after this. Hux wanted to mock him for it, but he wanted Ren’s mouth more. He struggled against the knight’s grip.

“Damnit Ren, I’m _here_. What more do you kriffing wan––”

The rest of his irritation was lost to both of them as Ren jerked forward, like Hux had been pulling him in this whole time and he finally couldn’t keep himself back anymore.

 _Damned fool_ , thought Hux even as he groaned into the heat of the other’s mouth, feeling like it had been hours since he last tasted him instead of a handful of tense minutes. Ren’s chuckle vibrated against his lips as he struggled to turn around, pulling himself up and over the knight’s lap so that he could grind his hips down in search of the friction that his skin was crying out for.

Ren shivered when he did, and it was gratifying to find the knight just as hard as he was, thick and swollen under the press of Hux’s body. That made it real for him, more than anything else. The obvious evidence of Ren’s arousal pressing at him through the sheets and the knowledge that he had put it there, that the knight desired him too, at least for this one moment…

He lifted his hips to repeat the motion, but Ren’s hands stopped him again. The knight’s eyes were dark with amusement when Hux leaned in to snarl at him, and for a brief, horrible moment Hux was afraid that this had all been a joke. That Ren had let him come this far, only to turn him out with a laugh.

“Your uniform,” Ren said in clarification, though if he’d tasted the fear in Hux’s thoughts he gave no indication. “Get yourself out of it.”

Hux rolled himself quickly off the bed, already reaching for the clasps and looking down to disguise the heat of the relief that flooded him. Ren watched him intently, which only made the his cheeks heat further. He’d always hated putting on a show, but listening to Ren when he used that tone was slightly exhilarating and shedding the pieces of the wrecked uniform felt good, regardless.

When he had stepped out of the last piece of clothing he made to move back toward the bed, but Ren stopped him with a curt wave. “No. The end of the bed. On all fours, facing me.”

Hux hesitated, not understanding. The bed wasn’t long, but Ren looked like he had no intention of moving from where he was propped up against the headboard. He went, though, crawling into the position that Ren wanted because whatever happened from here, it felt good to listen, to make himself vulnerable by choice instead of being ruled by it the way it had been ruling him outside this room. Here it could be his ally, his tool for pleasure even though to anyone else it might seem that he was more out of control than ever.

He knew the truth. And so, he suspected, did Ren.

He was leaking precome by the time he was settled into position, already anticipating whatever Ren was going to ask of him next.

Ren however, said nothing.

There was a quick touch against his lips like a kiss and he choked an inhale when he realized what it must be. Ren’s eyes were fixed on him, his hands sitting loosely in his lap, but he was _touching_ him, rubbing gentle bursts of sensation that lingered against his lips before trailing slowly across his cheek and down the back of his neck. The ghostly touch followed his spine next, moving down each vertebrae with agonizing slowness until Hux was a mess of tension in anticipation of what was all but promised to come next.

He pressed his face into the mattress and shivered as something that was nothing slid along the seam of his ass, parting him there and rubbing against his entrance with teasing pressure. On instinct his hips pressed back, seeking traction against that press, but of course there was nothing to push back into. Ren was in front of him, not behind, the phantom hands on Hux were under his control alone.

“You want it.”

It wasn’t a question and Hux didn’t know if he was expected to answer but he didn’t want to wait, didn’t think that he could, so he blurted “ _Yes,”_ against the sheets, lifting his gaze to show Ren that he meant it. He needed this more than he thought he could stand.

Something in that seemed to appease Ren, because a small amount of the pressure at his entrance suddenly pushed into him, stretching him for the first time and tearing a disgracefully needy sound from the back of his throat.

The...he didn’t know what to call it, the feeling, the _Force_ moved inside of him, dragging at his walls and pulsing gently inside of him, taking the stretch farther only when Ren decided that he could handle it.  His fists spasmed in the bedsheets, nearly tearing them when that phantom sensation found the small bead of nerves within him and dragged down over it, making him choke wretchedly on a breath as his whole spine arched helplessly in toward the mattress.

“There it is,” commented Ren from his place at the head of the bed, and the sensation repeated, pulling another shattered sound from Hux as he tried to cope.

It was impossible to get used to. To have nothing touching him and yet still be touched. To look up into the dark of Ren’s gaze and know that every overwhelming thing he felt were coming directly from him, that the knight’s intentions were made physical inside him without Ren ever having to lift a finger.

The pressure dragged down over that spot at third time, and Hux cried out, begging Ren for something he wasn’t sure the knight would give him yet. 

Ren chuckled, reading it on him.

“You know that I could make you come just like this. I’d never even need to touch you myself.  It would be easy.”

Hux shook his head fitfully against the sheets as Ren continued to stretch him. He didn’t want that. If this was his last time with anyone then he didn’t want some invisible magic to bring him off. He wanted flesh and sweat and real heat on his skin, and that was something that only Ren could give him now.

“Do you want to come here?”

Hux nodded fervently into the mattress, feeling wrecked already and too nervous of his own voice to speak. Ren seemed to have moved past his requirement for verbalization, though, because he patted his lap in invitation. “Good. Then come.”

Hux clambered over the sheets without a second thought, pulling himself into Ren’s lap and noticing that if the other man had been wearing any pants when Hux came in they were gone now. He was darkly hard, flushed and leaking with aching arousal to match the heat that was pouring through Hux himself. He felt victorious at the sight of it, knowing now that Ren’s teasing threat to leave him untouched had been empty from the start. 

Ren needed this just as badly as he did, no matter how even he could keep his voice.

Hux he pressed his face into Ren’s neck, inhaling the scent of him as the knight called a small bottle of lubricant from the refresher into his palm with a soft _slap._ The too-clean scent of the bacta still clung to him, but beneath that he smelled good; sweaty and warm and _human_ in ways that Hux would never have believed before this impossible day had brought him into this man’s bed. He breathed deeply as Ren poured the liquid into his palm and slicked himself, and when Ren finally lined himself up Hux could only tremble, beyond ready and aching to get on with it.

Ren didn’t bother to ask if he was ready. He already knew that he was.

Slowly, Ren began to guide his hips down and Hux was sure, now, that he had lost all control of his voice with the weak way it pulled from him. Ren’s cock spread him open with a realness that made Hux’s head spin as he gripped at the knight’s shoulders, fighting to simply stay upright against the onslaught of sensation. He couldn’t remember the last time that simply being entered by someone had felt so purely visceral, like Ren moving into him was suddenly all there was left of the world.  Hux was glad. He wanted it to be like this, this one last time.

This close, Hux could see the way that the strain of moving slowly was playing across Ren’s features and wanted to tell him to hurry but his breath was coming out in shallow wheezes now and he couldn’t seem to shape the words around them.  The thing about Ren, though, was that thoughts were enough, and when he was halfway down around the knight Ren gave his hips a sharp tug, bringing their hips flush and burying the rest of himself in Hux in one smooth motion.

Hux’s head fell back, mouth slack and eyes going wide around the sudden, complete _fullness_ of Ren inside of him. He could hear Ren’s breath stuttering and wanted to look at him, to confirm that being inside Hux was wrecking his control but Ren, the bastard that he was, must have felt the thought because the moment it flashed through Hux’s mind the knight tugged his hips up with startling ease before pulling him quickly back down again, fucking into him in a rippling shock of pure white heat.

Hux crumpled against him, moaning against the raggedly-healed skin of the knight’s shoulder as Ren did it again, only slightly more gently this time, moving Hux over his cock and guiding him into a pace that Hux was sure his wrecked limbs could never have managed on their own. He wrapped his arms around Ren’s neck, his only coherent thought a need to somehow get closer, to experience every last second of this before it was gone.

He began pressing sloppy, open-mouthed kisses against the scarred surface of the knight’s skin, suddenly wanting to taste him as well as smell him and Ren groaned his approval, his fingers pressing into Hux’s flesh hard enough to print what Hux deliriously hoped would become dark bruises against the pale of his hips.  He wanted them.  The marks would be like a badge that couldn’t be taken from him when he died.

The rhythmic movement of Ren’s arms and his grip on Hux’s hips seemed tireless, never slowing or faltering as they moved him, but Hux could feel the taut lines of Ren starting to shudder beneath him. He might have confused it for his own trembling if not for the way the knight’s breathing was coming apart in his ear, harsh and ragged now, and growing more so with each slap of their skin. It was deeply satisfying, listening to Ren fall apart this way, though Hux knew that if this was a contest that he had already lost, his composure long since surrendered to the sensation.

It didn’t feel like a contest, though. Ren moving in him felt like a gift, like salvation, though he knew the choice of words would make him cringe come morning. If he even remembered them. His cock was dumping precum now, thick beads of it smearing against Ren’s bandages with every heated drag of Ren’s cock along his walls and every burst of overwhelming pressure as he was filled again. His fingers spasmed against Ren’s back. He was so close.

Impossibly, Ren started to move him faster. Pushing him harder, unraveling him with a speed that left Hux dizzy. It felt as though he truly might be coming apart with each rise and fall of his own hips. He was fraying, splintering; as though his entire existence were somehow braiding itself into this one moment of singular sensation and there would be nothing left of him once it was over.

 _Good_ , thought Hux with surprising clarity and then his mind shot through with white as his orgasm took him, harder and more complete than anything he had ever experienced. It scoured him, washing him clean of anything other than the searing force of the pleasure as it ripped through him, pouring out in ropes across the hard planes of Ren’s stomach.

Ren groaned, his voice joining the soft wail that Hux hadn’t even noticed himself making. He brought Hux’s hips down around himself once, twice, three times more before shuddering his own completion, burying his face in Hux’s hair with a shout. His arms snaked around Hux’s waist, pulling the general’s body tight against himself as he rocked through the waves of his own orgasm.

Hux had not the energy to resist. His mind felt hazy and scrubbed-over in the aftermath of his orgasm and his muscles were loose, watery things that felt utterly useless beneath his skin. He was sure he wouldn’t have been able to move himself if he had wanted to, so he simply clung to Ren, allowing the knight to gasp against his hair and pet damp streaks across his skin as they both trembled, ruined by one another and what they had done.

Time seemed to kaleidoscope in that moment together, ballooning out and folding in on itself until Hux couldn’t say how long they’d stayed like that, pressed against one another as the world tried to crowd back into the space they’d carved for themselves here. Too soon, though, Ren’s hands pressed beneath his thighs and lifted him again, sliding Hux off his softening cock with as much care as he could, but there was nothing that could have stopped Hux’s whimper when the last vestiges of pressure left him.

It felt like the loss of something much more profound than just a cock in his ass. If felt like the loss of a connection, of something that might have been if things had been different; the loss of a moment that they would never get back.

Ren slid the both of them down into the bed as Hux reeled with that, pulling the sheets up around them with one arm and silently securing Hux against himself with the other. Hux told himself that he was being absurd, that it was only the extraordinary circumstances that were making him think that way and not some imagined connection with a man he didn’t even like. It was better this way, anyway. Something like that with anyone would have ruined him long before the Starkiller had.

 _Five more minutes,_ he lied to himself, pushing his face into Ren’s hair and breathing in more of that unexpected humanity. _Five more minutes and you’ll get out of this bed, wash yourself off and go back next door._

He knew he wouldn’t, although thinking it made him feel better, and sleep pulled him away almost before the thought had even cleared his mind.

~~~

The lights were still on when he woke.

He pulled himself from Ren’s sleep-loosened grip, shaking his head at this telling oversight. They weren’t at full power, instead hovering at the fifty percent that Ren must have been using for his meditation, but it was more than enough for Hux to see by as he rolled off the bed, picking his way across the room towards the small refresher. His movements felt smooth, if a little heavy, making him his cheeks warm briefly at the memory of everything that had happened.  They had gotten a bit carried away.

He eyed his ruined uniform with disgust as he passed. The damned thing had already been all but unwearable before it had spent the night on Ren’s floor, steeping in the smell of what had admittedly been some incomparably good sex. The thought of having to put it back on again soon was a deeply upsetting one, and he quickly stepped past the crumpled heap and into the refresher, determined to hang onto this pleasant, fucked-out feeling for as long as he could before he was forced to confront realities like dressing himself and everything else that would inevitably follow after.

The water in the shower was hot and felt like heaven against the weighty almost-ache of his skin, and when it stung against his shoulder he was reminded of how Ren’s teeth were still printed in raised purples against his otherwise pale skin. He resisted the urge to reach up and touch it. The mark was there. That was enough.

Hux scrubbed his hands through his hair a few times and then reached around to begin the uncomfortable process of cleaning himself out. For an insane moment he was struck with the perverse desire to leave it there. To still have something of Ren within himself when Snoke passed down his judgement, but thankfully the notion passed quickly. It wasn’t Ren that Hux wanted to keep so much as a reminder of what they’d done. He hadn’t intended it as one, in the beginning, but having fucked Ren the way they had felt like a defiance. As though going against his own better judgement to allow himself this indulgence was somehow a snub of Snoke’s control over him. Over _both_ of them.

He remembered the way Ren had shouted when he’d come and the way that the knight’s arms had shook when he’d held Hux to him, after.

He smiled coldly. For just the span of the brief and blurry moments that they had shared together, Kylo Ren had belonged to _him_.

When he stepped out of the refresher, wrapping the towel around him as he went and feeling more mentally put-together than he had since before the Starkiller, the first thing he noticed was that Ren was awake. He was sitting at the edge of the bed hunched over something, evidently deep in concentration. Something about seeing the knight with his feet on the floor tugged at Hux’s brain oddly and he took a step closer, only to realize that the thing in Ren’s hands was his own uniform. Ren was clutching it in his lap, staring at it. It probably would have struck Hux as off if it hadn’t been so utterly baffling a scene to begin with.

“What are you doing?” he called, stifling a pang of amusement when Ren jumped like a guilty child.

“Your uniform,” he said quickly, like Hux hadn’t already realized what he was holding. “I…cleaned it.”

He held it out to him. Hux just stared.

“You were upset about the mess,” Ren said defensively, shaking the bundle of fabric a bit. “I heard you. I got most of it out.”

Hux tried to piece together this information into something that actually made sense. Kylo Ren, wielder of both unimaginable power and unrivaled childishness had...what? Used his mystic gifts to pull some grime out of Hux’s uniform all because he’d heard him whining about it in his head?

Ren shook the cloth at him again, looking more and more uncomfortable. “Do you want it or not?”

As he reached to take the bundle Hux thought absently that this was a stupid question. Of course he wanted it. He had nothing else to wear.

He turned the fabric over in his hands, marveling slightly. Ren really had done as he said. All the stiffness and places where the knight’s blood had matted the fabric were gone and Hux quickly started pulling it on, as though afraid that if he waited the effects might be reversed somehow.

As he was doing up some of the straps, it abruptly occurred to him why it had felt odd to see Ren sitting away from the center of the mattress.

“You didn’t move at all last night.” He said it like he was seeking confirmation, though looking back he already knew he was right. Ren hadn’t once moved from his place against the headboard from the time Hux had walked into the room until the moment when Ren had finally pulled them both down on the bed to sleep. He wasn’t sure how something like that had escaped his notice, though he supposed that he had had better things to think about in the moment.

Ren shrugged almost looking sheepish, like he’d been caught out in something. “That doctor said not to.”

Hux snorted before he could stop himself.

That was amusing. Ren had actually listened to the doctor.  Then he flushed warm when he realized that Ren had apparently managed to give him some of the best sex of his life while listening to the damn doctor.

He noticed Ren smirking at him like a cocky teenager and actually had to fight to keep from rolling his eyes at his childishness. Telling the knight to stay out of his head had proven to be an exercise in futility so he didn’t bother, focusing instead on fastening the last of the clasps across his chest

He looked down at himself when he was finished, hardly daring to believe it. His uniform sat on him normally, no rough patches or obvious gore stains in sight. Hell, Ren had somehow even managed to get the worst of the wrinkles out. The fabric was still a bit tired-looking, apparently no amount of Force-magicking could fix that, but he looked like himself again. The relief that hit him over this seemingly small thing was crippling. He could face the Supreme Leader like this, with his head held high, though he’d still have wished for better to be buried in. His hat, perhaps, and his greatcoat––though both were now lost.

Ren’s hand reached abortively for him a few times, sensing the tenor of his thoughts, before the knight finally seemed to reach a decision and pulled Hux down to sit beside him, staring at him seriously.

“Please,” he said. Formal, like he’d rehearsed this. “Allow me to intercede for you.”

For the second time in the last ten minutes Hux simply stared, disbelief crowding out his conscious thoughts.

“With Snoke,” the knight tried again. “Let me speak on your behalf. He can…” Ren floundered suddenly, seemingly lost for what he wanted to say. “Sometimes he listens.”

A thousand cutting comments sprang easily to mind. Ren wanted to help him now? To save him? What utter, childish nonsense. They had fucked. It had been good––too good––but there was no deeper meaning to it. In the end it was nothing, the same as everything else, and what was Ren even playing at trying to pretend otherwise? In a few hours Hux would either be in agony or gone altogether and Ren would swan off to begin the inscrutable process of completing his training. Ren would forget him. _Everyone_ would forget him. He was hours from a fate that he had only just finally been able to accept within himself and how dare Ren attempt to offer him false comfort from that now?

The words seemed to swallow themselves up on the way to his throat, though.

What was the point, even?

For whatever reason, Ren had cleaned his uniform. Ren was sitting there, on the edge of the bed they had fucked in, making some kind of baffling, misguided attempt at comfort by pretending that this thing they had allowed themselves to do might possibly be allowed have a future, and Hux...wanted to let him.

Why not spend his last few hours alive indulging in some pointless fantasy? It wasn’t as if it could ruin him, now.  It wasn’t as if he’d get another chance.

Without answering he turned, quickly tucking himself into the space under Ren’s chin and relished the feeling when Ren’s arms came up to hold him there. Gently. Like it mattered, somehow.

He could allow himself this.  Just once.  Just for now.

Somehow, it didn’t seem like the worst thought, anyway.

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> AND HERE IS THE ART!!!  
>   
> Holy shit, guys, LOOK at this. [injureddreams](http://injureddreams.tumblr.com/) did this BEAUTIFUL thing and I am just in awe. Their expressions, how _desperate_ it feels, SHE EVEN GOT THE HALF-LIGHTING THAT I ONLY MENTIONED AFTER THE FACT. Hux's hand in Ren's hair, the way Ren is clutching at Hux's hip... JUST KILL ME NOW, I'll die happy. I can't even get into how beautiful the proportionality is because I'll loose my MIND. hnnnnhg.  
>  injureddreams is a gift from heaven, so make sure you go show her some love on her tumblr, okay? Good. <3
> 
> As for this story, there is more to come! I didn't expect this thing to run away from me quite like it did and I didn't have time to finish. I've been taking a bit of a break because, like I mentioned, there was a LOT of Redbull and no sleep involved in getting into this headspace and I needed a breather, but I'll get back on it soon!  
> In the meantime feel free to check out my stupid and chat with me at [countofeight.tumblr.com](countofeight.tumblr.com). I just started using it and I could frankly use some help figuring it out. How are pokes a thing? I want to be pokable...
> 
> ~~~  
> UPDATE: There is also an amazing doodle by zimeatswaffel of Ren pulling the blood out of Hux's shirt. It is so cute and I'm SO IN LOVE! Go look at it right [HERE](http://countofeight.tumblr.com/post/145591176614/zimeatswaffel-said-bonus-ren-pulling-his-blood)!!!!


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